Most Precious of Secrets
by LittleLongHairedOutlaw
Summary: Knowing it will be a difficult journey for him, Christine and Erik follow Raoul to America. But Christine is keeping a secret of her own, one she dare not tell Erik about until they are far enough away that they can't turn around.


**A/N: Written because of a prompt on Tumblr wanting Erik and Christine, and "things you said when you were scared". It morphed into this, a follow-up to Digging Up Bones. You don't have to read that, just know it is Raoul-centric and an AU where he went to America pre-canon and fell in love with a palaeontologist. And I am very fond of it.**

* * *

She knew she was expecting before she ever raised the question of going to America. And maybe it was foolhardy of her, to suggest a journey by boat and train and stagecoach and horseback, but she could not in good conscience let Raoul go alone. Not after all he went through the first time. Not when the first place he would make his way to would be the lonely grave where Martin lies.

She never knew the man but it is enough for her to know that Raoul loved him.

So she makes her suggestion, and she and Erik go. And she wonders, idly, to herself, where they will be by the time she starts to show.

She knows there is only so long she can keep it secret, but surely there are women who have made much worse journeys than her in the same condition, and who have had healthy babies by the end of it.

For the sake of Raoul, and being with him at such a difficult time

And so they follow him to America, over the wide Atlantic where she blames her nausea on sea travel and Erik looks at her with concern, but she assures him again and again that it is simply being on a ship that is her problem. She takes him to their bed, and lays him down, and guides his hands to where she would like his touch, and that leaves him satisfied, the concern melted from his eyes because if she can want his touch, then she can hardly be so ill, can she?

She sings for him, and he sleeps, and she knows the explanations for the nausea that is part of her condition will not always be as easy as this, but for now she will take what she is given.

They find Raoul in New York, and he pulls her into a hug that tells her with his trembling that she was very right to decide to follow him. He has been making arrangements, writing letters to people, and there is an expedition to find bones in Colorado that he is very interested in joining, and the bones he found before, the first time he came, when he met and loved and lost Martin, are held safe in Chicago. He wants to see them, too, but Wyoming is where he must go first. Wyoming, and that grave on the bank of the Powder River.

She thinks, perhaps, beneath the Wyoming stars, is as good a place as any to tell Erik her news.

At least, when they get there, it will be too late for him to change his mind, and insist on their immediate return home. She knows her husband, and knows that he will always put her first, above anything, and if he hears about a baby it will trouble him.

Besides, it is bad luck to tell people before she is twelve weeks along. Anything can happen, especially so early, and it would not do to worry Erik, and then for something to go wrong. Prolonged worry is no good for a man of his age.

* * *

They take the train to Chicago. She has always liked trains. They are such a comfortable way to travel, and the motion of the train does not make her feel ill, but it does help her sleep.

Raoul has meetings with fellow bone-hunters in Chicago, and so she and Erik are left to their own devices. They visit the theatre, and she convinces him to take her dancing, and when they return to the hotel they are breathless and laughing and he kisses her as he scoops her into his arms, and deposits her on their bed, and she might almost tell him, here and now, might lay his hand on her belly and tell him that his child enjoys it too when he spins her around, but she can picture the panic that would shutter his eyes, and she holds her tongue, and smiles as she pulls him down on top of her, so that his mouth meets her neck, and he giggles into her skin.

(Perhaps drunk is the best condition for him to be in when she tells him. And then when he sobers the news will already have taken up residence in his mind, and perhaps some of the worry passed.)

They journey on for Cheyenne, all the time watching the changing landscape. Raoul has made his plans, that they are to go to the Powder River first, and then, afterwards, he will gather some men, and go on to Colorado to the bonefields. They are welcome to join him, if they wish, and she knows Erik is interested in the bones but she knows, too, that he will be a good deal less interested when she begins to show and she is forced to tell him.

For her own part, she has been to the Galleries of Comparative Anatomy, and it might be nice, to see how the bones come out of the ground.

But Cheyenne first, and she elects to dress in men's clothes for the long ride to the Powder River. Erik takes one look at her in her new canvas trousers and cotton shirt, and leads her straight back to bed.

(She does not mind. It is no harm to the baby, and Erik looks extremely dashing before he puts his mask on, in his new clothes, and his hat. It is almost how he might have been in another world, and it makes something in her chest flutter.)

They acquire horses, and guns. She chooses a neat little pistol that she hopes she will not have to shoot, and Erik puts on his glasses to examine the rifle Raoul hands him, before nodding appreciatively.

It is a cool morning, when they ride out, and the scenery is like nothing she has seen before. Grasslands, fresh and green in the late spring sun. It is years since she has been on a horse, but something in her bones remembers it, and the motions come almost natural. Erik is relaxed on his horse, tall and dark, and if she were an artist she might paint him. Fortunately for her she knows an artist, and Raoul smiles at her when she suggests it, but the sadness that she knows means he is thinking of Martin has taken up residence in his eyes.

Someday, she thinks, she would like to come back here. Would like to show all this to the sun she will have, or the daughter. The sky bruised pink in early evening, the mountains reaching high, the waving of the grass in the breeze. It is a world away from Paris, from cities and buildings and opera houses, and the world of Paris is her world but there is a peace to this world that feels as if something in her blood is crying out for it.

They sleep on the ground at night, Raoul wrapped in his blanket at the fire, her nestled in Erik's arms in their own blankets, and as she lies beneath the stars, listening to his soft breathing, to the gentle beating of his heart in his chest, she looks up at that vast spreading sky, at the moon shining full, the stars scattered pinpricks of soft light, and with her hand on her belly she knows she wants her child to know such a view, to look up into all that darkness, and see such beauty, and know they are not the first, and will not be the last. To know that they are a part of everything that has ever been and ever will be, even the dinosaurs that bring a light of wonder to Raoul's eyes.

She wants, she realises, for her child to know bones, and rocks, the way it will know music, and art. To have it all, and never feel alone.

* * *

It is an easy rhythm they slip into. Riding by day, sleeping by the fire at night. Erik murmurs softly to his horse, and smiles, and hums to himself as they ride. And sometimes Raoul tells them stories of things from before, and most of them are about Martin, and bones, and Christine lets each one soak into her, and holds them close, these pieces of a man she never knew but who she mourns because Raoul loved him, but often he is quiet, his eyes heavy, and the smiles he gives her are edged downwards with sadness.

Mostly she thinks, and wonders, and dreams.

It is two weeks of riding before they find it. The knoll, by the bend in the river. A careful arrangement of stones that has weathered five years. And Raoul's hand goes the locket hanging around his neck as he slips from his horse, and sinks to his knees by those stones, and she knows it is the right place, knows this is where the man Raoul still loves above all others lies, and she clutches Erik's hand, and squeezes it, and knows she must tell him.

* * *

But first for Martin.

They pick fresh flowers, and lay them on the grave. Raoul sits, and sketches, and pours the holy water that he brought with him out on the stones. She whispers silent prayers, out here where there is no church, no priest, but it does not feel any less sacred, any less sacrosanct, for that. Erik traces the stones with his fingers, and sings, softly, old songs she has never heard him sing before, and she knows they are special, knows they are requiems, and if this is all they can do for Raoul, sing softly and be here with him, then this they will do.

As night falls, they give him space, and sleep apart from him, and it is there she takes Erik's hand, and lays it on her belly, where there is the slightest swell that was not there when they left Paris, and looks into his eyes, shining golden in the bright starlight, his mask cast away, and he frowns, just slightly, but she lays a finger on his lips, and looks deep into those eyes.

"There's going to be a baby," she whispers, and he inhales sharply, his eyes widening.

"Are you sure?"

She nods. "In about five months, or so."

The frown furrows his brow again, and she knows he is calculating, knows he is beginning to suspect.

"How long-"

It is best to be honest, even if the answer might add to his worry. "Since before we left Paris."

He inhales again. "And you still suggested this? Coming out here? Anything could happen!" His voice is high and she shushes him so as not to disturb Raoul, but she knows he is not angry with her. Upset, maybe, for the risk, and for not telling him, but not angry. Only afraid.

"But it won't," she whispers. "I know it won't."

He looks down again, at his hand on her belly, at the new softness of her, and tears shine in his eyes. "I'm not having you out here," he whispers.

"What about going on to Colorado?"

"Colorado can hang. I won't sleep easy until you're safe in our own bed."

* * *

Neither of them sleep that night, but nor do they speak, each lost in their own thoughts. And when Raoul tells them it is time to turn back for Cheyenne, they tell him their news, and he cries and hugs them and insist they ride slower so as not to risk hurting her, even when she tells him there is no need, but Erik is in solid agreement with Raoul, and she knows he is still upset with her for putting herself in any sort of danger.

By the time they are back in Cheyenne, almost three weeks later, her shirts have grown just tight enough that Erik's is more comfortable.

He wants to rush straight back to Paris, to home, but she doesn't want to rush. Why rush when it might be years before they can come back to America again, between the baby and the opera?

Besides, she doesn't want to be too far from Raoul. She has already decided what she wants to name the baby, if it is a boy, and who she wants to name godfather, and she knows Erik will agree to her on both points. It does not seem fair, with both of those decisions made in the privacy of her own mind, to be too far from Raoul.

They discuss the matter on the stagecoach to Denver, though the jolting leaves her nauseous and does make her a little concerned for the safety of the child, and Raoul insists on going on for Chicago.

"There will be plenty of other summers to dig up bones," he says.

* * *

Erik is true to his word, and barely sleeps at all as they travel from Denver to Chicago. In Chicago she gives him laudanum when he refuses to go to bed, and leaves a note that she is gone to look at bones with Raoul. She gets new dresses tailored, ones that can be let out as she grows, and by the time they reach New York again he looks marginally less terrified every time he remembers she is expecting.

She is not certain he sleeps much at all on the ship, but she is less nauseous this time, and as she lies in his arms he tells her over and over again that he loves her, and he very much does not want anything to happen, to her or their baby.

In Paris her doctor admonishes her for having gone travelling through the wilds of America, and tells her she is very fortunate nothing happened to her.

She buys things for the baby, and makes arrangements to take extra time off from the Garnier, and spends a lot of time in the Galleries of Comparative Anatomy, sometimes with Raoul, sometimes with Erik, often alone.

Erik is so anxious about the impending birth he cannot bear to sit at his piano at all, and takes to pacing the parlour playing his violin.

It might almost be amusing.

Someday, she is sure, she will look back on this and laugh.

* * *

Erik declared, when they were married, that he has no good name to give her, and took Daaé to be his. And so little Martin Erik Daaé is born, in the chill of early November. Erik spends the day smoking and looking at bones with Raoul, too agitated to compose and Raoul too on edge at becoming a godfather to sit and write the papers he is supposed to. Erik might have been spared worrying for the full duration of the pregnancy by Christine having decided to keep it secret for so long, but every moment of fear he has had of something going wrong, of Christine being ill, or the baby not surviving, or the baby looking like him, or any multitude of things happening that are not supposed to happen, has been building to this and he feels faint to even think that his child is being born.

And then, to think that his child _has _been born.

The midwife assures him it is a very handsome son, that mother and baby are well, but still he is weak as he steps into the bedroom where Christine is waiting for him to meet their tiny boy.

Raoul squeezes his shoulder in reassurance, and waits outside.

Erik swallows thickly against the tightness in his throat, the fear still lingering deep in his chest, and kisses Christine's cheek lightly, before he looks down at the bundle swaddled in her arms, the tiniest fingers he has ever seen peeking out from the blankets.

Their son, that she told him about beneath the Wyoming stars.

Tears sting his eyes, and for the first time since she told him, his smile comes easily.

* * *

**A/N: If you enjoy, please review and maybe consider reading Digging Up Bones if you haven't already?**


End file.
